Anything but a surprise. Marius Vizer, the Austrian leader of Romanian origin, announced on Sunday May 31, in a press release published on the organization's website, his resignation from the presidency of SportAccord. The predictable epilogue, if not announced, of a soap opera started by his muscular speech at the last SportAccord Convention, in April 2015 in Sochi.
Increasingly lonely within an organization that he had chaired since his election in the spring of 2013, Marius Vizer had no other choice but to give up his apron. Following his very hostile remarks to the IOC and Thomas Bach, more than twenty international federations left SportAccord or severed their relations. Among them, some of the most important in the Olympic movement, including the IAAF, one of the first to withdraw.
Marius Vizer attempted a last stand, at the end of last month, by reaching out to the IOC by a very diplomatic letter addressed to Thomas Bach. He proposed a meeting to renew ties, in “the interest of the international sports movement”. A letter accompanied by a 20-point plan, in which the president of SportAccord suggested, in particular, a sharing of Games resources more favorable to international federations, the systematic admission of all IF presidents as members of the IOC and an entry of these same international federations in the capital of the future Olympic channel.
A sword in the water. Thomas Bach, placed in a stronger position than ever, responded that there was no rush and that there was no question of a meeting with Marius Vizer before the next session of the IOC Executive Board, scheduled for the end of the week. in Lausanne.
The final blow for Marius Vizer: the defection of his lifelong ally, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah. The powerful Kuwaiti leader, president of ANOC and Olympic Solidarity, did not hesitate between Bach and Vizer. He chose the president of the IOC and made it known in a long press release.
Exit, therefore, Marius Vizer. But, true to his image and reputation, the Austrian did not leave by keeping a low profile. He slammed the door, offering himself one last exit. “One of the important principles of the sport that has dedicated me is HONOR. I withdraw with honor and for the honor of sport and its credibility in society,” he wrote on the SportAccord website.
“Over the past month it has been demonstrated that in the free world there are still higher structures in which the supreme value is silence! », he also wrote in a final attack against the IOC, but without naming the Olympic organization and its president.
Very lively, the now ex-president of SportAccord suggested that everything he had proposed was “right” and that he had thus “opened a door that had been closed for a century”. Before continuing: “I hope that this door remains open for the benefit of sport and its values. »
Marius Vizer killed two birds with one stone by announcing in the same press release his resignation from the coordination commission for the Tokyo Games in 2020. He remains president of the International Judo Federation (IJF).
What will happen to SportAccord? Will the organization look for a successor? Difficult to answer exactly at this stage of the process. For the immediate future, the interim president is the Swiss Gian Franco Kasper, president of the International Ski Federation and the Association of International Winter Sports Federations. The question of the future does not seem to concern the IOC. “We were aware of his resignation,” said the Olympic institution. We will continue our exchanges with the international federations and discuss all this during the next IOC session at the end of the week. A page turns.
